We can be very certain that President Xi Jinping and influential Chinese oligarchs are intently watching responses of American and allied NATO Western powers to President Putin’s Russian invasion of Ukraine as they contemplate their own actions against Taiwan.
As with Putin’s claim of Ukraine as an integral historical and cultural part of Russia, Beijing continues to view Taiwan as part of a unified China despite the civil war retreat of defeated Republic of China (ROC) forces to the island of Taiwan (Formosa) in 1949.
In some ways, Taiwan is even more vulnerable than Ukraine because of its ambiguous diplomatic status where only 13 nations and the Vatican still recognize Taiwan as a sovereign country.
Relationships between China and Russia as they pertain to Ukraine, Taiwan, and other territorial matters, are enormously complex and globally consequential.
On the Russian side, President Putin, who has called the collapse of the Soviet Union “the greatest geopolitical catastrophe of the 20th century,” seeks Beijing’s Ukraine non-interference in reversing that circumstance.
President Xi, who has described the absorption of Taiwan — by force, if necessary — as a pillar of his vision of “rejuvenating the Chinese nation,” likely welcomes Russia’s military invasion of Ukraine to draw U.S. focus away from China’s provocations in Taiwan.
China’s rapid expansion of taunting actions against Taiwan clearly underscore Beijing’s determination to become the world’s leading global economic and military power by midcentury.
This aspiration was articulated by President Xi in 2011, and it was adopted in 2017 by the 19th Congress of the Communist Party of China as formal policy.
According to a formal statement from the Chinese Foreign Ministry, “China-Russia relations have emerged from all kinds of tests to demonstrate new vitality…Russia will be the most staunch supporter of the Chinese government’s legitimate position on Taiwan-related issues.”
Both sides are inevitably emboldened to exploit transparently dysfunctional U.S. leadership exhibited by America’s Afghanistan withdrawal debacle as good mutual opportunities to push territorial ambitions.
According to the New York Times, reports in Chinese state media have highlighted divisions in NATO and portrayed the United States as weak and indecisive, strongly indicating that “governments in Asia — Taiwan, the Philippines, Japan and South Korea — should not count on American diplomatic or military support in a crisis.”
Whereas the Biden administration has said outright that it would not send troops to defend Ukraine, it has not stated whether the U.S. would defend Taiwan. A historic American policy known as “strategic ambiguity” intentionally leaves this diplomacy door ajar.
To be sure, China and Russia have major disputes that also provide substantial causes to be wary of one another. The two countries hold long-standing distrust and enmity, including deadly border conflicts that led China and the Soviet Union to the brink of war in 1969.
And although they don’t like or trust each other very much, they have nevertheless signed a military cooperation pact that should greatly concern the entire free world.
Last December, President Putin and his counterpart Xi Jinping agreed to collaborate as a common warning to the U.S. and our regional allies in their special spheres of interest not to meddle with their expansionist military agendas.
In addition, China and Russia also share important economic trade interdependencies. Russia has an abundance of natural resources — coal, oil, gas, metals, and fertilizers that China needs to fuel its industries and growth.
A new Gazprom gas pipeline connecting Russia’s far east region with northeast China will bolster an energy alliance with Beijing amid Moscow’s strained ties with the West over Ukraine and America’s new ban on Russian oil and gas imports.
Russia already sends gas to China via its Power of Siberia pipeline which began pumping supplies in 2019, and also plans to increase needed coal production which powers about 56% of China’s industry-heavy economy.
Beijing is carefully watching to see how Washington and Western European allies respond to Putin’s Ukraine invasion as it gauges what to do next.
There was notably little pushback in 2008 when Russia invaded Georgia, grabbed Crimea, pushed into the Middle East, and sliced off Ukraine’s southeast … or again in 2014 when they took control of the Crimean Peninsula.
This time, although there are signs of stronger U.S. willingness to join with Germany and other NATO allies in imposing tougher sanctions blocking Russian oligarch access to SWIFT global internet accounts, they have incredulously exempted the most important ones of all, those involving painful oil and gas transactions.
Meanwhile, in the mere year since Joe Biden took office, America devolved from being energy independent and a leading global exporter to become an energy pauper that is reliant on foreign imports.
There is every bad reason to anticipate that China will take military action against Taiwan. The only real question is how soon.
In calibrating timing, expect Beijing to be taking note of American and allied responses to Russia’s Ukraine invasion: whether it demonstrates strengthened cooperation and resolve, or rather, produces a desensitizing effect that might make an attack on Taiwan less shocking that it would otherwise be.
A weakened and global trade-isolated Russia in the aftermath may also transform Moscow into a captive petrochemical Beijing satellite as China continues to extend its economic influence and territorial conquests into the Middle East, Africa, and Eastern Europe.
In all cases, America’s demonstration of strength and resolve to counteract Putin’s brutal, unprovoked invasion of a sovereign European nation by one of our two greatest geopolitical adversaries is a test we dare not fail.
The fallouts of Russian and Chinese appeasements will have resounding impacts felt around the globe.
Larry Bell is an endowed professor of space architecture at the University of Houston where he founded Sasakawa International Center for Space Architecture and the graduate space architecture program. His latest of 11 books, "Beyond Flagpoles and Footprints: Pioneering the Space Frontier" co-authored with Buzz Aldrin (2021), is available on Amazon along with all others. Read Larry Bell's Reports — More Here.